The internet is wonderful thing. It educates, entertains, and sometimes throws up the odd VERY unexpected download.
I go on several music/recording related websites and found someone extolling the virtues of the multitrack master recordings of a couple of Queen songs they had found. A bit of research and digging later and I too managed to find them.
Basically, Digidesign, who make the industry-standard recording and editing package ProTools had a demo disc for dealers which contained a few multitrack masters by well-known artists transferred from their original 24-track analogue tapes. This found its way into unauthorised hands, as digital data almost inevitably does, and was circulated on the net about a year or so ago. It took me till now to find them.
So, after downloading, you are presented with 24 WAV or MP3 files which you drop into your multitrack recording DAW of choice.
This gives you, in effect the master tape of the song, sitting there on your own PC, to mess about with. Now I'm not suggesting that this should be done, or that you should go looking for them, but, from a recording point of view, the educational aspect of these tapes cannot be underestimated. (And no, I won't tell you where I found them either!)
The two Queen tracks, Bohemian Rhapsody and Killer Queen, show some amazing recording skills and trickery to achieve the fab sounds we are so accustomed to. These include:
1. Layer upon layer upon layer of vocals for the opera section of Bo Rhap.
2. THREE bass guitar tracks, all playing the same to fatten the sound.
3. A multi-layered choir of Freddies on Killer Queen that sounds autotuned but isn't. He was THAT good at repeating his performance for the multiple harmony takes.
4. A few nice little dropped-in fills and tags added just to augment the track.
As a writing and recording artist myself, it gave me LOTS of ideas, and a heck of a lot of pleasure mixing the tracks myself to sound as close to the record as possible using the automated console.
